In August, before leaving for our respective countries, the Global Citizen Year Fellows watched the movie Avatar together to help us understand our roles as foreigners entering a new culture in a faraway land. The alien race of the Na’vi is at one with nature while the human visitors are materialistic and tied to technology. I would never have imagined how strikingly similar the nine foot tall blue inhabitants of the planet Pandora could be to the indigenous of this strange new world I have found myself in. There is a connection with the natural world here in…

Here it is, everyone. My long awaited video blog. This was taken way back in October, before I was a champion horse back rider. I have not fallen off the horse since. Enjoy!…

“Yo voy caminando a la montaña donde nací,” sang out my brother, Omar, and I as we lugged enormous pieces of firewood up the mountain to the family car. No weight was too heavy to bring down our spirits today, for indeed we were “going for a walk to the mountain where we were born.” The trip up to the summit of Rancho Chico, which we had been planning for several weeks, was to begin today. We would sleep on the mountain overnight and return, triumphant, in the morning. Easy, right? I am now sure that I wouldn’t consider it…

I know few people funnier than Connor Delaney, an amateur comedian and my best friend back in the US. A standard night of Connor and I hanging out consists of us walking to the beach or waiting in line for ice cream and sparking up conversations with other kids. Just when our new friends begin to get comfortable with us, Connor will blindside them with a ridiculous comment. “So how old are you guys?” “We’re one hundred years old.” They will usually take a moment to laugh and then look up at us to find we are not smiling. “We…

If there’s one thing I learned this week, it’s that there is a big difference between saying “I’m going to be living in rural Ecuador on a Global Citizen Year,” and living in rural Ecuador on a Global Citizen Year.  There is one phrase that was beaten into my head these past few days that particularly describes this difference: “Mas duro.” In English, this roughly translates to “harder”. “Mas duro! Mas duro!” encouraged my host mom as I squeezed the cow as firmly as I could, but drew no milk. “Mas duro! Mas duro!” cried my brother Nixon as I…

I wanted to take this blog post to share some thoughts that I’ve been having about the meaning of the word “fellowship”. I am a Global Citizen Year “Fellow”, or so they told me when I was accepted to the program. I was to travel to Ecuador, Brazil or Senegal with fifty five other “Fellows” to learn a new language and assimilate into a new culture, to become a part of a host family and an Ecuadorian community. Little did I realize then the full weight of the word Fellow, and how it would play into my year abroad.
Now,…